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Charles Syrett

Posted 16 November 2012 - 12:00 PM

I wasn't sure where to share this. I own this atlas, and it's crazy to see how much info is crammed on some of these maps. I thought someone out there might appreciate seeing one or two.

Note: While historically cool, this isn't an example of good design today! I mean, I don't think... I do like looking at it, though... It takes me back.

Greetings, fellow Hammond fan! As a kid I poured over Hammond atlases, and my sense of design was permanently warped by that. Here's a scan of a page from their Historical Atlas, published in 1960. Note the tasteful type placement.

Close inspection shows that the linework was done in pen and ink. For example, the rivers were tapered by hand. Presumably, budgets didn't allow for a lot of overlays (that's physical overlays, boys and girls, not digital layers), so they would do all the linework in black ink, draftsman-style, and then carefully paint overlays for the various area fills.

Why do I love this style so much? I still gaze at these maps almost every day.

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I make legends.

Posted 16 November 2012 - 12:32 PM

I make legends.

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I love those colors!

That looks large. How big is it? My atlas is a mere 7"x9" or so, and that's what makes the maps I posted so crazy. And they were cropped further after scanning. I admit I shelved the book after I found it and never really went through it. The '60s-style pages on how to read a map, what a map is and how it relates to the world, and how to read symbology, are so kitschy!

I worked for a small newspaper office in the late '80s where the mock-up room had narrow rolls of clear tape with dotted lines, dashed lines, different widths, and such, for adding specialty outlines to advertisements and such, and the hairlines between columns. I bet when someone finally invented that back then, people were really excited. Imagine if they knew how maps were made today! I sometimes wonder, though, if we're really saving any time, or just adding functionality. But now I'm rambling without my coffee, and I should stop.

Charles Syrett

Posted 16 November 2012 - 01:17 PM

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Size: a little larger than page size. One pass in a standard scanner.

Tapes: I remember using those for ink/letraset/leroy jobs. There were various brands, one being Letraline. I just Googled that, and you can still get it, but just as plain lines. Back in the day, you could get all kinds of fancy dot and dash patterns!

OK, back to the style. The style you see on these maps was actually de rigeur in the early 60s. Below is a section of a geological map produced in the late 60s by the Ontario Department of Mines. (A few years later I worked for the fellow who did this map, in the same department.) Although this map was made using scribing and peelcoat, the general design approach is very similar to the Hammond historical map. White water, black type, even slabserif typeface for political areas. Again, note the tasteful type placement.

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Dennis McClendon

Posted 16 November 2012 - 02:47 PM

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I have no formal training, so I didn't know about peelcoat until it had become a relic. But I used the crepe tape to invent its positive equivalent of scribing. I would lay down black crepe tape on clear Mylar overlays. Because I could tear the stuff with my fingernail, it was easy to very rapidly lay down an entire street grid or region full of highways or whatever. Other overlays held the type and solid areas cut from Rubylith. Sometimes some inked or grease-pencil lines on matte-surface plastic. All pin registered on a light table, with elaborate instructions to the printer about reverses, chokes, fatties, screens, etc.

woneil

Posted 18 November 2012 - 12:06 AM

I was amused to see this. As a kid I despised the Hammond atlases, and thought little better of the National Geographic maps!

My father had studied geography and had intended to pursue it as a career until the Great Depression intervened. He never lost his love of geography and maps, however, and when I was 6 years old he gave me a copy of Goode's School Atlas, which I loved and still have. Attached is a sample.

From the Goode's maps I acquired the view that proper maps had to have height and landform information, or else be thematic. (The atlas has a great selection of thematic maps.) The purely political maps of the Hammond atlases were a very inferior substitute, in my eyes. I also thought Goode's much superior in point of projections. I looked down on my benighted schoolmates, denied the benefits of a proper atlas!

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woneil

Posted 18 November 2012 - 12:16 AM

woneil

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My second love among atlases was found in a booksellers in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, a copy of the first edition of the Oxford Atlas. Again, a sample is attached. Their style, I felt, was even more effective in conveying landforms, and the lighter tones made it easier to pick out the political and cultural features.

Of course the later style of Goode's (and others), combining relief shading with light hypsometric coloring, is even more appealing.

Charles Syrett

Posted 18 November 2012 - 06:46 PM

From the Goode's maps I acquired the view that proper maps had to have height and landform information, or else be thematic.

Not sure what you mean by this. I'm sure you don't mean it to be as sweepingly generalized a statement as it sounds!

(The atlas has a great selection of thematic maps.) The purely political maps of the Hammond atlases were a very inferior substitute, in my eyes.

I have Hammond atlases that show relief as well as political information. Hammond did road maps, physical maps, historical maps etc. – the full gamut, just as other map publishing companies did.

I also thought Goode's much superior in point of projections. I looked down on my benighted schoolmates, denied the benefits of a proper atlas!

Goode's atlas has also been a favorite of mine. I especially enjoy the earlier editions that had Physiography maps using Erwin Raisz's drawings. His physiographic drawings and hand lettering were combined with background colours, with stunning effect. Last year, I acquired the current Goode's atlas out of curiosity, and sure enough, the Raisz maps are gone. All the maps have been remade, but the general look and feel is still there, and the cartographic quality is still high.

My earlier remarks on Hammond maps were more based on what they reflected of the cartographic style during that time period. I also have lots of Oxford atlases. They all have a similar style.

Dennis McClendon

Posted 19 November 2012 - 01:40 PM

Can't say I ever used a grease pencil, though! What kind of feature would you draw with it, and for what kind of map?

Once or twice I made an attempt at shaded relief. I've also always been intrigued by the problem of representing uncertain or imprecise boundaries, so I would use the rough texture produced by a grease pencil on vellum to "roughly" represent the built-up portions of an urban area.

rudy

Posted 22 November 2012 - 08:57 PM

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While we are on the topic of "formative" atlases of the 1960s . . . here is my contribution: the Time-Life Pictorial Atlas of the World, cartography by Rand-McNally, published in 1962. I still have it, complete with slip case. I remember the cool looking relief maps as viewed from space (no clouds). Here is a sample of what I mean:relief_sample.jpg489.63KB41 downloadsLoads of pictures and positive hopeful text that saw the world in bustling, industrious terms. I remember paging through that thing often. Perhaps that's where my love of maps began.

rudy

Posted 22 November 2012 - 08:59 PM

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Couldn't add this to the post above so I'll add it here.

A sample from the same atlas of the cartography, similar in style to the Hammond mentioned earlier:europe_sample.jpg571.91KB31 downloads
Interesting to note that there was no West or East Germany back then (at least not on the map), even though the Berlin Wall went up in the previous year.

I make legends.

Posted 23 November 2012 - 04:56 AM

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I've also got a Collier's World Atlas and Gazetteer from 1939 with maps in color and black/white. Not just their own, but they have reprinted old maps from other companies and from chambers of commerce and county offices. Very detailed hand drawn maps of bustling cities, the kind with 2d streets instead of just lines. It's amazing to look through. It's depressing that these are going for nine dollars online on some websites. What has the world come to?